ALT News No. 33

Mon Oct 6 11:49:48 UTC 2003

ALT News No. 33
October 2003

1. ALT V, Cagliari(15-18 September 2003)
2. The 2003 Elections
3. Recently Published
4. Mouton discount rates for ALT members
5. Announcement
Appendix

1. ALT V, Cagliari(15-18 September 2003)

1.1. Thanks

Another great conference (preceded by a successful Summer School) and
another two ALT years. The following colleagues deserve our gratitude:

ALT V - the conference (and Summer School)
The local organizers, esp. Ines Loi Corvetto and Ignazio Putzu, but also
Martin Haspelmath and Paolo Ramat, all of whom also deserve credit for
organizing the Summer School
The Program Committee: Balthasar Bickel, Walter Bisang (chair), Östen
Dahl, Aditi Lahiri,Vera Podlesskaya, and Lindsay Whaley
The organizer of the pre-conference workshop on lexical typology, Masha
Koptsjevskaja-Tamm

ALT - the organization
Nominating Committee: Mily Crevels (chair), Claude Hagège,
Tasaku Tsunoda, Nigel Vincent
The members of the Executive Commitee whose term now ends: Bernard
Comrie, Scott Delancey, Marianne Mithun, Frans Plank, Maria Polinsky,
Johan van der Auwera
The members of the LT s editorial board whose term now ends: Edith
Moravcsik and Leon Stassen
William McGregor, the Chair of the Jury of the Junior Award that was
postponed
Peter Kahrel, on the web
the Mouton Staff in Berlin, esp. Kirstin Boergen

1.2. Business Meeting on 17 September

a. Membership

The Secretary presented the current figures on membership. According to
Mouton, ALT had 414 paying members in 2001 (347 regular and 67 student).
Our own figure is ± 500, without counting the ± 50 group members from
Moscow and Tbilisi. For 2002 Mouton lists 421 members (350 regular and
71 student). Compare to our own figure of ± 550 members, again not
counting the group members.

The problem of the discrepancy of the two sets of figures is an old one.
After ALT IV a harmonization operation was started in Antwerp, Lancaster
and Berlin. Two years later, the problem is back. Of course, the two
figures do not actually count the same thing. Lancaster and Antwerp
count everyone who pledges to become and remain a member and to fulfill
the financial duties. Mouton counts the individuals that actually pay.
Hence, unavoidably, the Mouton figures are the real figures. True,
individual problems with handling the invoices occur - rather frequently
even - but they get individual attention, both in Antwerp/Lancaster and
in Berlin. For everybody s sake, the benefits of paying by credit card
cannot be praised enough. In principle, if you have paid by credit card
once, Mouton assumes that that you will remain a member and fulfill your
financial duties with the same credit card  for ever after . When next
year s invoice comes, it should say (in English) that you do not have to
do anything special and that the credit card account will be credited
automatically, unless you object.

The webpage of ALT V inadvertently said that the (higher) non-member
conference fee would include a membership to ALT. In fact, the
difference between the non-member rate and the member rate is not equal
to an annual membership. Nevertheless, ALT will live up to the
expectation. Anybody concerned is invited to contact the
Secretary-Treasurer.

b. Finances

The Secretary-Treasurer presented the current figures on finances.
 Legal help  concerns an annual membership fee to an organization
helping non-profit organizations. In 2003 this organization also drew up
a set of new statutes (see below), which were then translated into
English. The figures are in Euro.

Date Action Sum Balance
2001
Dec Bank interest + 186,89 +7.224,33
2002
March Legal help - 74,37 +7.149,96
Nov 17 Membership fees + 2.988,39 +10.138,35
Dec 24 Bank interests + 184,54 +10.322,89
2003
March Legal help - 74,37 +10.248,52
May Membership fees + 3.150,00 +13.398,52
Aug Legal help -225,47 +13.173,05
Sept Translation statutes -268,62 +12,904,43

ALT now has a small buffer. This should allow the new EC to think about
installing a scheme for offering financial help to colleagues with
papers accepted but without local travel funds.

c. Linguistic Typology

The Editor-in-chief, Frans Plank, gave figures on submission and
acceptance rates for the ALT journal. See attachment.

d. Legal Status

At the business meeting at ALT IV (2001) it was decided that the
Executive Committee would further explore strategies to enter ALT as a
non-profit organization under Belgian law. 2002 and 2003 were years of
consultation and discussion. In all likelihood ALT will start its legal
existence as a non-profit organization on January 1 2004. For this
purpose, a new set of statutes had to be drawn up and translated into
English. These bind only the Executive Committee. ALT s original
statutes will remain in full force and will bind the organization as a
whole. With respect to Belgian law, they will acquire the status of an
 internal rule book .

e. Change of statutes / internal rule book

The Journal now has a board of 8 members, two of which are replaced
annually. This has proved difficult to work with. The basic problem was
that the turn-over came too fast. There were repeated problems with
board members rotating off too rapidly to handle the full process of
reviews from start to finish The Executive Committee and the current
board propose to expand the board with one member and to have three
replacements every second year. This amounts to a change in the original
statutes. See appendix.

f. Future ALT meetings

ALT has so far received three informal offers to host ALT VI in 2005,
viz. Moscow, Paris, and Tunis. ALT gratefully acknowledges these offers
and would like to explore the details. Any further offers are also
welcomed. Moscow, Paris, and Tunis as well as other potential hosts are
asked to contact the Secretary-Treasurer soon with an eye towards
submitting substantive proposals before December 31 2003.

g. Junior Award

There was a small number of submissions. A new call will be launched.
The works submitted so far will remain in competition.

h. A Grammar as a Doctorate

Tom Payne shared his worry that descriptive grammars are either not
accepted as doctorates at many universities or are not valued
sufficiently. It turned out that the overwhelming majority of the people
attending the business meeting could confirm that grammars are accepted
as doctoral dissertations at their home institutes. However, concern was
voiced about the idea that writing a doctorate might often not be a wise
decision on the part of the student for advancing his/her career and
getting a job.

i. Typological databases

Greville Corbett invites ALT members to visit the typological databases
of the Surrey Morphology Group at:

http://www.surrey.ac.uk/LIS/SMG/

They can be searched on-line, and give the user access to the original
linguistic data.

2. The 2003 Elections

The Nominating Committee proposed a slate for the five offices to be
renewed, all on the Executive Committee and all for a four year period
The nominees have all accepted.

President: Nick Evans
Secretary-Treasurer: Johan van der Auwera
Editor in chief LT: Frans Plank
Members:
Zygmunt Frajzyngier
Marianne Mithun
Doris Payne

This slate is now offered for approval to the membership (see appendix).

Normally, there would also be elections for the Editorial Board, but the
change in the statutes, if accepted, will make elections unnecessary
this time.

3. Recently Published

See attachment

4. Mouton discount rates for ALT members

See the list in the attachment. Orders are placed with the
Secretary-Treasurer.

5. Announcement

Call for Abstracts:
SYNTAX OF THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES (SWL 1)
Leipzig (Germany), 5-8 August 2004

Invited speakers:
Peter Austin (SOAS London)
Maria Polinsky (UC San Diego)
Marianne Mithun (UC Santa Barbara)

This conference will bring together researchers working on the syntactic
structure of less widely studied languages from a variety of
perspectives. Contributions are expected to be based on first-hand data
of individual languages or to adopt a broadly comparative perspective.
All major theoretical frameworks are equally welcome, as is work done in
analytical frameworks developed in typology or field linguistics.

Local organizers:
Balthasar Bickel (University of Leipzig, bickel at uni-leipzig.de)
Martin Haspelmath (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,
haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)

Deadline for abstracts: 15 December 2003
Notification: 31 January 2004
Conference URL: http://email.eva.mpg.de/~haspelmt/SWL1.html

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Marianne Mithun [President]
Department of Linguistics UCSB
University of California tel: + 1-805-893-4058
Santa Barbara, California 93106 + 1-805-563-1152
USA fax: + 1-805-563-1948
E-mail: mithun at linguistics.ucsb.edu

Frans Plank [Editor-in-chief, Linguistic Typology]
Sprachwissenschaft
Universitaet Konstanz
D-78457 Konstanz tel + 49 7531 88 26 56
Germany fax + 49 7531 88 27 41
E-mail: frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de

Johan van der Auwera [Secretary-Treasurer]
Linguistiek (GER)
Universiteit Antwerpen (UIA)
B-2610 Antwerpen tel + 32 3 820 27 76
Belgium fax + 32 3 820 27 62
E-mail: auwera at uia.ua.ac.be

ALT on the WEB: http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/alt
Webmaster : Peter Kahrel p.kahrel at lancaster.ac.uk

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Appendix:

1. Change of Statutes

Original article:

Article III. Officers and Committees
5. Eight other members of the Editorial Board shall be elected for four
years, with the possibility of re-election, with two members retiring
and two members joining every year.

Proposal for new article:

Article III. Officers and Committees
5. Nine other members of the Editorial Board shall be elected for six
years, with the possibility of re-election, with three members retiring
and three members joining elected every other year.

I APPROVE of the proposed change.

OR

I DO NOT APPROVE of the proposed change.

2: The 2003 Elections

I APPROVE of the entire slate of ALT officers nominated, as listed in
ALT News No. 33.

OR

I APPROVE of only part of the slate, as listed in ALT News No. 33.

Jan 1 2004 - Dec 31 2007

President: Nick Evans YES/NO
Secretary-Treasurer: Johan van der Auwera YES/NO
Editor-in-chief: Frans Plank YES/NO

Executive Committee, Members

Zygmunt Fraynzyngier YES/NO
Marianne Mithun YES/NO
Doris Payne YES/NO

Please return the Appendix by December 12 2003 to Johan van der Auwera
(auwera at uia.ua.ac.be)

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